‘This internal Tory battle to define the meaning of 8 June is of interest to more than just the Conservative party. It will have a huge bearing on the direction of the current government, however long it lasts.’
Photograph: Reuters

They say success has a thousand parents while failure is an orphan. But judging by the argument now raging inside the Conservative party, what failure lacks in parents it makes up for in guides and tutors – all now queuing up to explain last week’s Tory debacle in terms that, surprise, surprise, neatly fit their prior political positions.

David Cameron has weighed in, suggesting that the effect of last week’s election is that the government might have to pursue a “softer” Brexit. He’s reinforcing the views of his former chancellor, George Osborne, who’s been gleefully pointing out that there is now no majority in the House of Commons for a departure from the single market.

That could be dismissed as merely the revenge of the Cameroons, gloating over the failure of Theresa May, who not only sacked Osborne but ditched the modernisation agenda that defined the Cameron era. (During the campaign, May seemed determined to retoxify the Tory brand, whether by depriving kids of free school meals or bringing back foxhunting.) But it goes beyond the schadenfreude of a former PM and his charmed circle.

Cameron’s predecessor, John Major, put it baldly in a gripping interview on Tuesday with the World At One. “A hard Brexit was not endorsed by the electorate,” he said, chiming with the views of Anna Soubry and others. For these Tory remainers, the postmortem has been done and the verdict is in. May went into the election seeking a mandate for a hard Brexit and it was that demand that was rejected – hence Labour’s vote share rising by 12 points in the most heavily pro-remain areas.

Naturally, there is another Tory camp that sees it very differently. For them, it was austerity – the animating project of the Cameron-Osborne government – that turned off the electorate and which was punished last week. May herself appears to have reached that conclusion, perhaps pushed there by David Davis and Boris Johnson, both cited in the front page story in Tuesday’s Times whose headline declared: “Austerity is over, May tells Tories.” For Davis and Johnson, such an analysis has obvious appeal. As arch-leavers, they can say it was not hard Brexit that was rejected last Thursday, but hard times. That allows them to argue that it was Osborne’s agenda that alienated the voters, not theirs.

This internal Tory battle to define the meaning of 8 June is of interest to more than just the Conservative party. It will have a huge bearing on the direction of the current government, however long it lasts. Whichever view of why the Tories failed to win a majority becomes the settled one will determine the course they now take.

If they conclude that they lost seats because they were too hardline on Brexit, that could see a tilt towards Philip Hammond, who hopes at least to cling to membership of the customs union. It could further see May forced to accept transitional arrangements that would entail more EU migration for longer, in order to accommodate Ruth Davidson and her call for an “open Brexit”.

If, on the other hand, the Tories decide it was austerity that did for them, that might see a return to May’s original pitch as prime minister: to loosen the purse strings and do more for the “just about managing”. There will be little appetite for further spending cuts but, on the contrary, a desire to match some of Jeremy Corbyn’s retail offers on, say, tuition fees, schools and the NHS. Witness sacked minister Robert Halfon’s article for the Sun today. Calling for the Tories to be renamed “the Workers party” or “the Conservative Workers party”, Halfon was full of praise for Labour’s “moral message” and urged his colleagues to march into that same terrain, promising to act on wages, employment rights and public services.

What’s striking is how few Tories are blaming the failure purely on May herself – even though such an explanation has clear appeal, given that she ran what was surely the worst election campaign in living memory. That’s because such an analysis would require an obvious solution: a leadership contest followed by a second general election, a prospect that, at this moment, Tories face with fear.

So, instead, they are casting either Brexit or austerity as the culprits. Whichever thesis prevails, which of these two villains gets blamed, will shape the course pursued by this new, and precarious, government.